Defense Build Strategies
Different ratios of defensive structures provide different kinds of defense, each suited to repelling different types of fleets. This article presents a series of different ratios explaining the costs, benefits and disadvantages of each. If you have an alternate strategy you would recommend please add it to the end of this list, do NOT overwrite someone else's strategy *If you don't have time for your account very often, you should build defense that would cause slightly more damage than the value of any resources that can be plundered in your absence. *If the amount of resources that can be plundered are much greater than your defense, then you can be certain another player will target your planet for the resources. A possible solution is fleetsave. Early Game Defense Ratios *Build Light Lasers as your fodder. *Build Rocket Launchers when you have spare metal but no spare crystal **Consider 2 Rocket Launchers as being 1 Light Laser *Build 1 Heavy Laser for every 10 Light Lasers. *Build 1 Ion Cannon for every 20 Light Lasers. *Build 1 Small Shield Dome when you reach 50 Light Lasers *Build 1 Gauss Cannon for every 50 Light Lasers. *Build 1 Large Shield Dome as soon as you can afford it *Fill a level 2 missile silo with Anti-ballistic Missiles when you reach 200 Light Lasers That means when you acquire 200 Light Lasers, you should have: *400 Rocket Launchers *20 Heavy Lasers *10 Ion Cannons *4 Gauss Cannons *1 Small Shield Dome *1 Large Shield Dome *20 Anti-ballistic Missiles This strategy aims to offset your opponents likely use of Cruisers (which have Rapid Fire against Rocket Launchers) and scare off any smaller fleets. An appropriate amount of defense built at this ratio (relative to how many resources you leave on planet) should keep away any player without a fleet of Battleships and Bombers but you should be working on a Big Gun Defense before you reach the '200 Light Lasers' number in this example! Big Gun Heavy Ratios: *Build Rocket Launchers as your fodder. *Build 1 Light Laser for every 2 Rocket Launchers. *Build 1 Heavy Laser for every 10 Rocket Launchers. *Build 1 Ion Cannon for every 25 Rocket Launchers. *Build 1 Small Shield Dome when you reach 10 Rocket Launchers *Build 1 Gauss Cannon for every 50 Rocket Launchers. *Build 1 Plasma Turret for every 100 Rocket Launchers. *Build 1 Large Shield Dome when you reach 100 Rocket Launchers *Build Anti-ballistic Missiles when you reach 100 Rocket Launchers That means when you acquire 1000 Rocket Launchers, you should have: *500 Light Lasers *100 Heavy Lasers *40 Ion Cannons *20 Gauss Cannons *10 Plasma Turret *1 Small Shield Dome *1 Large Shield Dome * some Anti-ballistic Missiles The Total Cost of this method is: *4.390.000 Metal *1.550.000 Crystal *340.000 Deuterium *+ costs of silos and missiles Some critics of this setup would may point out that there are too many big guns (Gauss Cannons & Plasma Turrets) in this type of defense; however, in order to deter attack from higher level players, Gauss and Plasma Turrets are necessary in order to make sure a defender can damage an attacker's upper tier ships (i.e. Battleships, Bombers, and Destroyers), since upper tier vessels can easily break through defenses lacking in big guns. The Heavy Lasers included in this strategy are included to clear a path through the Light Fighters that players like to use as fodder in their raiding fleets, and the Ion Cannons are there for their strong shields. Fodder Heavy Ratios *Build Rocket Launchers as your fodder. *Build 1 Light Laser for every 5 Rocket Launchers. *Build 1 Heavy Laser for every 20 Rocket Launchers. *Build 1 Ion Cannon for every 60 Rocket Launchers. *Build 1 Small Shield Dome when you reach 100 Rocket Launchers *Build 1 Gauss Cannon for every 150 Rocket Launchers. *Build 1 Plasma Turret for every 500 Rocket Launchers. *Build 1 Large Shield Dome when you reach 500 Rocket Launchers *Build 1 Anti-ballistic Missile when you reach 500 Rocket Launchers That means when you acquire 500 Rocket Launchers, you should have: *100 Light Lasers *25 Heavy Lasers *8 Ion Cannons *3 Gauss Cannons *1 Plasma Turret *1 Small Shield Dome *1 Large Shield Dome * Anti-ballistic Missiles * Interplanetary Missiles The Total Cost of this method is: *1.486.000 Metal *303.000 Crystal *36.000 Deuterium At this point it would be very difficult to have enough resources sitting on a planet to make attacking profitable. People would only be attacking you to crash or ninja your fleet. Therefore this defensive strategy is suited towards supporting a fleet of ships in orbit of the planet. You will achieve much more fodder for a comparable amount of res spent because the resources you are not building nearly as many big guns - you have big ships in orbit instead. Your large amount of fodder makes it much harder for people to kill your ships and profit from the attack, while your defense is killing their Light Fighter screen in droves. Note that any defense built at this ratio will be more vulnerable to Death Star attack as shots from Rocket Launchers, Light Lasers, Heavy Lasers, and Ion Cannons are rendered pointless against the Bouncing Effect. Endgame (against rips) One thing you should be very careful with is the fact that only plasma turrets and shield domes do not have a rapid fire from RIPs against them. This means that if you have no or very very little of these compared to the rest of your defenses (lots of fodder) the rips will really go to town and can fire up to 160 times a piece in a single round shredding everything to bits. Whenever a rip hits a plasma turret or a shield dome, its turn will end however. (test this on a simulator if you need to) Therefore the rules change when rips come into play, albeit this sort of defense won't disappoint against bombers either as their rapidfire can be annoying too. Ratios *Build Light Lasers as your fodder. *Build Rocket Launchers when you have spare metal but no spare crystal (Consider 2 Rocket Launchers as being 1 Light Laser) *Build 1 Heavy Laser for every 3 Light Lasers. *Build 1 Ion Cannon for every 3 Light Lasers. *Build 1 Gauss Cannon for every 4 Light Lasers. *Build 1 Plasma Cannon for every 5 Light Lasers. Of course, you should have both domes and as many ABMs as you can fit. That means when you acquire 3000 Light Lasers (or 6000 Rocket Launchers), you should have: *1000 Heavy Lasers *1000 Ion Cannons *750 Gauss Cannons *600 Plasma Turrets *1 Small Shield Dome *1 Large Shield Dome Total Cost of this method: *57.560.000 Metal (65060000 using Rocket Launchers) *50.810.000 Crystal (49310000 using Rocket Launchers) *19.500.000 Deuterium You now have a plasma to fodder ratio of almost 1 to 10 and the point here is that the plasmas are numerous enough to actually be hit by rips, but have enough fodder to be fairly safe from the rest of the attackers' fleet. The above defense by the way will kill 23 attacking RIPs (with no other ships as fodder) and kill most when 24 were to attack. More importantly, the attacker needs a minimum of 155 RIPs(!) to even have a chance of winning in one battle. Needless to say, you'll be needing massive amounts of ABMs. Big Guns Mid-to-Late Game This defense strategy is the one that will protect you against the most Battle Ship based fleets and Destroyer based fleets, you'll have enough fodder that will protect your big guns while they destroy the attacking fleets efectively. Ratios: *Use the Rocket Launcher as your fodder. *1 Light Laser for every 2 Rocket Launcher *1 Heavy Laser for every 20 Rocket Launcher *1 Ion Cannon for every 20 Rocket Launcher *1 Gauss Cannon for every 20 or 40 Rocket Launcher (For every 20 will protect you better of mixed fleets with Cruiser on them, since they can destroy a Cruiser in one hit) *1 Plasma Turret for every 100 Rocket Launcher *1 Small Shield Dome when you have 50 Rocket Launcher *1 Large Shield Dome when you have 100 Rocket Launcher *Choice Anti-ballistic Missile By the time you have 1000 Rocket Launchers, you'll have: *500 Light Laser *50 Heavy Laser *50 Ion Cannon *50 or 25 Gauss Cannon *10 Plasma Turret *Small Shield Dome *Large Shield Dome *Some Anti-ballistic Missile The cost of this strategy is: With the 50 Gauss Cannons: Metal: 4,710,000 Crystal: 1,960,000 Deuterium: 400,000 Plus the cost of the ABM's you chosen to build. With 25 Gauss Cannons: Metal: 4,210,000 Crystal: 1,585,000 Deuterium: 350,000 Plus the cost of the ABM's you chosen to build This Strategy is my personal favorite since it's covers most of fleets made by an average Raider with fleets of Cruiser, Battle Ship, Destroyer and shouldn't have much problem to take out Battlecruiser. Category:Strategy